


Once Upon A Time

by nostalgia



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Gallifrey, crazily au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-28
Updated: 2012-03-28
Packaged: 2017-11-02 15:48:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/370681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nostalgia/pseuds/nostalgia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor's life on Gallifrey is not all it seems.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Once Upon A Time

The typewriter was a brand new antique, specially-created to look like an ancient design (much to the amusement of Grandmother, who had her own eccentricities). He wound a sheet of paper into it and then picked up the pile of drawings his wife had left on the desk that morning before she left for work. They were close, as always, falling just short of capturing the dreams as he relayed them. Perfect to anyone but him, of course.

He'd been thinking about the story for weeks, talking about it until Romana covered her ears and told him to shut up. Those stories were always the best, though, the ones he just couldn't get out of his head until he'd written them down. 

Writing them down was, of course, much more difficult. They flowed, but he hesitated. It always felt like he was cheating on reality, as though his imagined universe might someday break loose from the pages and replace the real one. 

He stretched his fingers and looked up at the ceiling for a moment. Procrastination. He had nothing to distract him, Romana had made sure of that. He adjusted his bow-tie and then carefully typed out a few words. 

_The Planet of the Dead_.

Too depressing? Too scary? Nah, kids loved that stuff. Frightening children had won him plenty of popularity over the years. (Never acclaim, though, for his genre didn't command much respect among critics.) He'd signed an autograph for a member of the High Council once. 

He started the story, letting it appear on the page as it was in his head. 

 

“Isn't this the same plot as _The Horns of Nimon_?” asked Grandmother.

He looked up at what passed for her 'face.'

“The wormholes and the ravaging of planets. You've written this one before.”

The Doctor waved a dismissive hand. “The plot's just there to hang the story on. There's nothing of significance that they have in common.”

“If you say so, dear.” She slid a camera down from a wall to look at him more closely. “I don't know why you ask me to read them if you never listen to what I have to say.”

“I listen to you!” he protested. 

“You should write about the red girl,” she said, as always. “I like the red girl. How are those dreams lately?”

“They're getting better.”

Grandmother chuckled mechanically. “I'm thirty thousand years old, I know when I'm being lied to.”

“You don't look a day over five hundred,” he said by way of distraction. 

Grandmother wasn't just the oldest family TARDIS, she was one of the oldest on the entire planet. She ran her House from deep within it, adding and deleting rooms as family-members came and went. The Doctor liked talking to her, not least because she was good at keeping secrets. And she'd travelled, in her youth. She'd seen the stars as he never had, could talk for hours about planets and habitats and the people who populated them. 

She blinked her lights once. “Your brother's looking for you. I told him you'd gone for a walk outside the dome.”

“Thanks.”

“He'll catch you eventually.”

“He wants me to write speeches for him. I told him I only do fiction.”

“That would seem to make you perfectly qualified for political writing,” said Grandmother.

 

Braxiatel was waiting by the door when the Doctor got home, playing with his moustache when he thought nobody could see him. He looked uncomfortable in his robes, as though they were a size too big for him. 

“Did you enjoy your walk?”

“Yes,” the Doctor lied. “I saw a mountain goat.”

“Perhaps you could write about it,” said his brother dryly. He never had approved of 'telling tales'.

“Perhaps I will. And no.”

“No?” Brax followed him in as he opened the door and stepped into his rooms. 

“No political speeches. I told you-”

“Father wants to see you.”

“And my daughter wants a pony, but she probably won't get one.”

Brax looked at him seriously. “He's ill.”

The Doctor shrugged. “He'll regenerate.”

“He was thinking that he might not.”

The Doctor's stomach flipped. “But he's got plenty left. He's one of the most careful people I know.”

“You'd know all this if you'd bothered to talk to him more than a quick video-call on Otherstide.” Brax sat down in the Doctor's favourite armchair and steepled his fingers. “He's tired. I think he's getting funny ideas about an afterlife. He won't listen to sense.”

“You mean he won't do what you tell him to do?”

“Same thing,” said Brax, easily. “If you can talk to an old TARDIS you can talk to your own father.”

“Grandmother's not just an old TARDIS.”

“I don't care,” said Brax, suddenly showing his frustration. “You sit here all day... _daydreaming_ while people like Romana and I are being productive.” He sighed and rubbed his forehead. “Will you _please_ go and see him? Take the children, make a day of it.” 

“You know what he'll want to talk about.”

“Well, perhaps this time he won't.” Brax picked up a book from the side-table and held it up to the Doctor. “At least he's more real than these... monsters in your head.”

 

The Doctor went alone, meandering through the corridors of the House as though he might get lost (impossible) and be able to avoid the meeting. As he walked his mind slid to thoughts of the red girl, the one he would never write about. The one who seemed to terrifyingly real. He knew her name, but saying it was out of the question. That would just encourage her. Lately he'd been _seeing_ her in his peripheral vision. 

She was human, young (but weren't they all?), with red hair down to her shoulders. Sometimes she looked sad, sometimes he couldn't read her expression at all. He glanced back as he turned a corner (just in case) but the corridor was empty. No red girl today. 

When he reached his father's rooms he stopped to neaten himself up. Childhood scoldings had never quite faded and he didn't want to start an argument because his hair wasn't tidy enough. He let himself in and headed to the library. 

“It's me,” he called as he neared the desk where his father was working. 

The old man turned his chair round and looked his son up and down. “You look well.”

“So do you,” said the Doctor. “Braxiatel said you were sick.”

“Did he say that? Hmm.”

The Doctor gritted his teeth. “Did you tell him you were going to die?”

“I told him to say whatever he had to. Don't blame your brother, he means well.”

“Right,” said the Doctor, turning on his heel, “I'll be off then.”

“Wait.”

He froze automatically. He turned back round slowly. “If you're going to talk about myths again...”

“Prophecy,” his father corrected. “Or a curse, if you prefer.”

“It's not going to happen,” said the Doctor yet again.

His father smiled sadly. “I think it already has.”

 

Tea was special. Tea wasn't native, having arrived with the Doctor's mother and become fashionable despite – or perhaps because of – all the scandal associated with her. His father boiled the kettle and poured two cups, giving the Doctor the two sugars he hadn't taken since three regenerations ago. 

“Your dreams have changed.”

The Doctor looked over his teacup. “How did you know that?”

He nodded. “I expected as much. I've made the curse my only work for the past few years.”

“Yes,” said the Doctor, aiming for casual. “You've mentioned it once or twice.”

“I've been telling people it's either disproved or wrongly interpreted. But I don't think that's the case.”

The Doctor leaned forwards. “Every day of my childhood I had that thing thrown at me. And yet you never said _then_ that it was a load of old-”

“It's not. The alien son of Lungbarrow _will_ destroy Gallifrey. Why do you think they banned aliens from the planet after your mother?”

“Because they can't go home without messing up the timelines.”

“No,” his father insisted, “it's because even _they_ worry about the curse.”

“Ah, the mysterious They.” The Doctor placed his teacup on the table and stood up. “I may write stories for children, but I do know what's real and what isn't.”

“Do you?”

The Doctor looked at his father, who was studiously examining a teaspoon. “What's that supposed to mean?”

“I imagine it's getting more difficult. Those dreams of yours will get more solid as time passes from... well, when did they change?”

The Doctor took a breath. “A few years ago. Just after the Andromeda Crisis, I think.”

“When we avoided a war with the Daleks. Or did we?”

The Doctor didn't like this one bit. “I think you've lost some marbles. Try looking behind the sofa.”

“There are many realities, but not all of them are equally real. Some of them are hollow.” His father held up a book. “It's all written down. If you'd ever bothered to study you'd know that.”

“I've got to go,” said the Doctor. He shifted from foot to foot, eager to get away. “I have to pick Miranda up from the nursery.”

His father stared at him until finally he nodded. “You'll realise soon enough.”

 

He tucked Miranda into bed and read her a story about Cybermen and a time-travelling witch. Not one of his best, but she adored it. He kissed her forehead and reached for the light. 

“Can I go to school soon?” she asked before his fingers could find the switch. 

“You're a bit young to worry about things like that,” he told her. 

“I'm not worried,” she said matter-of-factly. “I want to learn proper things, not like they teach you in the nursery.”

He managed to smile at her. “When you're older.” He hated the idea of losing her to tradition. Visiting in the holidays, growing older than her years, looking into the Untempered Schism. He switched the light off and left the room before she could protest. 

He shook off his jacket and sat down in the battered blue armchair that he'd found in the recycling centre. Romana was reading, so he coughed to attract her attention before speaking. “Do you think I married above my station?”

“Yes,” she said, turning a page. 

“Oh.”

“It's hardly your fault, I'm from a _very_ good family. I'd probably have to marry a cousin to have someone on my own social level.”

She was teasing him again. He tried to bring the conversation round to more serious matters. “It doesn't bother you, though? About the alien thing?”

Romana looked up from her book. “Of course not. Or did you think I've been harbouring a secret xenophobia all these years?”

“What about the curse?” he asked, trying to introduce it as a natural next step. 

Romana snorted. “Don't be ridiculous. You can hardly destroy Gallifrey by writing books for children.”

“I suppose.” It was bothering him, though. It was stupid and absurd, but recently his dreams had turned to destruction. “My father said he thinks it's happened. That we're in the wrong leg of the trousers of time.”

“Old academics tend to go a bit strange. It'll probably happen to me in a few years. Which reminds me, I have to give a lecture on the fifteen wayward galaxies first thing in the morning.” She put her book to one side. “Are you coming to bed?”

“I'm not tired.”

Romana smiled. “Good.”

 

He was up with the first sunrise, having spent his sleeping hours being taunted with visions of the red girl and a terrible sense of loss. He lay staring up at the ceiling, trying to work out why it seemed so real and how it absolutely couldn't be. 

Romana woke with the alarm clock and disappeared into the bathroom without saying a word. 

“What _are_ the fifteen wayward galaxies?” he asked when she reappeared wrapped in a towel. 

“For a start it's the _twelve_ wayward galaxies.”

The Doctor frowned. “No, you definitely said fifteen last night.”

Romana shook her head. “I don't think so. I wouldn't get something as simple as that wrong.”

The Doctor sat up, sheets bunching round his waist. “I'm serious.”

“So am I.”

He felt his hearts speed up. She'd made a mistake, or he was misremembering. No reason to get upset and yet...

 

“Yesterday there were fifteen wayward galaxies, and this morning there are only twelve.”

Grandmother was silent for a while and then she said “Yes.”

“How? How can that possibly happen?”

She turned her main screen towards him. “Both are true, but not in the same reality. Three of the galaxies were subsumed into a passing supergalaxy eighteen million years ago. But that only happened last night.”

“What's happening?” he asked, scared of what the answer might be. 

“Reality changed. You remember, and I remember, and nobody else does.”

“Why?”

Her screen lit up with rapidly-changing diagrams. “We are the point of divergence.” She sent a cool breeze across his skin, probably aiming to comfort. “Remember when you tried to leave?”

He nodded. He could never forget that, his most shaming failure. 

“I could have helped you. If I had, you would have succeeded. Or so the situation implies.”

“I've dreamed a whole life away from Gallifrey.”

“No,” she told him, “you've _lived_ a whole life away from Gallifrey. Those are memories. Real memories, of things that really did happen.”

The Doctor took a step back. “Reality doesn't... doesn't _leak_.”

Grandmother's voice sounded sad. “It does when it lacks stability. The universe is ending. Slowly, but ending.”

“The universe is always ending. That's what universes do. Bang, fizzle.”

“I've known for such a very long time. Before you were even thought of. I had hoped this world would be the one to survive.”

“The red girl... she's part of the other universe. Not just a dream.”

“Not just a dream,” Grandmother agreed. “You have to listen to her. You have to go to her, to save her reality even as ours dies.”

The Doctor shook his head. “I have a family. A career. I can't just -”

“There is no choice to be made. You _will_ leave. Alone,” she added, as though reading his thoughts. 

With a wheezing groan a tall blue box appeared in the centre of the room. “My daughter,” said Grandmother. “The one who should have taken you away from us.”

The Doctor reached out to touch the familiar wooden surface. “This is... she's in my dreams.” 

The doors opened inwards, inviting him to enter. He looked into the bright open space inside. “I can't leave. I have to at least say goodbye.”

“It doesn't matter,” said Grandmother, and the Doctor shivered. 

“Everyone dies when I go.”

“Yes.”

“You want me to _kill_ everyone in the universe?”

“We're dying anyway. I want you to _save_ everyone in the other reality.”

The Doctor felt his eyes water. “I'm not a hero,” he said. “I'm not selfless.”

“Someone has to be.”

 

Amy launched herself at him and wrapped her arms around him. “You're back! Oh, God, it was just me and River left. Everyone else had vanished. I thought-”

“Slow down, Pond,” he said, smoothing her hair with his hand.

She drew herself back from him and put her hands on her hips. “And where the bloody hell _were_ you anyway?”

“I was... I was in a universe where goldfish ruled the world. It was wonderful, I didn't want to leave and have to live with land-based bipeds again.”

River raised an eyebrow, but she didn't say anything. Amy laughed. “Well, it was a close one, wherever you were. I really thought we were all going to die.”

Rory appeared in the doorway. “Um. Was I dead again?”

Amy ran over to hug him. “Yeah, you need to stop doing that. It's going to get old eventually.”

River stepped closer to the Doctor. “The point of divergence,” she said quietly. “It would be round about the time you left Gallifrey.”

The Doctor looked at Amy and Rory. “Does it matter where I was? I'm home now. Back with the family.”


End file.
